


Coffee is Thicker than Water, and Other Birthday Songs

by merle_p



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Birthday, Childhood Memories, Dark Humor, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Sex for Money, Loss of Parent(s), Post-Canon Fix-It, Sibling Bonding, Slice of Life, Smoking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-04-06 07:38:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19058185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/pseuds/merle_p
Summary: Ben is there to keep him company, at least, in his usual dead kind of way.(30 years. 7 siblings. 5 birthdays. So much liquor. And one decent cup of coffee.)





	Coffee is Thicker than Water, and Other Birthday Songs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xslytherclawx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xslytherclawx/gifts).



> Hi xslytherclawx, thank you for letting me write for you. I hope you enjoy this!  
> The boys are stubborn and do what they want, but I steered them into the direction I thought you might like as best as I could.

 

 

 

**2001**

The day they are celebrating their 12th birthday (although in all honesty, there hadn’t been much of a celebration), Number Four, Five, and Six decide to conduct an investigation into their genetic lineage.

At least, that’s how Number Five chooses to phrase it. Which, as far as Number Four is concerned, is really just a pretentious way of saying they are wondering about the people who sold them to Reginald Hargreeves right after they were squeezed out into the world.

One of the best things anyone could say about their dad is that he is nothing if not meticulous in his documentation of relevant data. One of the bad things is that he also exhibits symptoms of severe paranoia when it comes to ensuring the privacy of said information. Which is to say, it’s not unreasonable to assume that the information they are looking for is somewhere in their father’s office. The question is how to get their hands on it.

“Can’t you just travel back in time to the day of our births?” Four asks, fumbling with his matches to light another cigarette. He inhales too quickly and coughs violently, trying to force some non-toxic air into his lungs.

Number Six pats his back patiently until he gets his breathing back under control.

Number Five throws him the pinched look that Four knows translates into _What did I do to deserve having to put up with your stupidity._ Four is kind of an expert for The Look. He gets to see it a lot.

“Well, I _could_ ,” Five says slowly, as if he is speaking to a toddler. “Except I wouldn’t know _where_ to go.”

“Besides,” Six says lightly, “he might end up as a baby and get stuck that way.”

“Not if it’s done right,” Five grumbles, but he doesn’t outright deny Six’ hypothesis, which means Six is probably right.

Somehow, Six is the only of the Hargreeves boys who is almost never on the receiving end of Five’s Look of Sheer Condescension™. Four supposes it has something to do with him actually _Liking Books_ almost as much as Five does, although their reading materials rarely overlap. For one thing, Six’ books actually include characters and stories instead of equations, which Four generally appreciates. Although having Five read textbooks about quantum theory out loud is a surefire way to get him to fall asleep again after a nightmare, which admittedly also has its perks.

“Okay, so I suppose that leaves us with Dad,” Four says reluctantly, and is almost proud when Five nods seriously as if he actually agrees with him.

“Yeah,” he says, scrunching up his face like he does when he’s thinking extra hard. Which is really most of the time. “I think we’ll need a distraction.”

 

“Young Masters,” Mr. Pogo says, in that tone of his that Four supposes is meant to convey respect but mostly sounds disapproving.

“May I inquire as to what you are doing down here? I seem to recall Master Hargreeves asking you to retreat to your rooms for study time.”

“Uhm, yeah,” Four smiles widely, throwing his arm around Six’ shoulders in a demonstratively casual kind of way. “We were. We did. Studying, that is. Lots of studying. Except …”

“Except then we had a question about the material that we wanted to ask Dad about,” Six chimes in, all wide eyes and fake earnestness, because he’s reliable like that.

Mr. Pogo raises his eyebrows at them. Not that he really has eyebrows, but the intention behind his expression is clear.

“Master Hargreeves is currently supervising Number Seven’s violin lesson,” he says pointedly. “As he always does at this time during the day.”

“Oh yes!” Four drawls, slapping a dramatic hand against his forehead. “Violin lessons, of course. I knew there was something I had forgotten.”

“So …” Mr. Pogo says, impatience shining through in his voice. “As you can see, there is really no reason for you to be in the downstairs hallway. If you have completed your studies for the day, you may always use the time until dinner to get a headstart on the next chapter in the textbook.”

“Right,” Six nods earnestly, without moving from the spot. “Of course. We’ll get right to that.”

“In your rooms, if you please,” Mr. Pogo adds dryly.

“Sir, yes, Sir!” Four salutes, causing Pogo’s face to shift from mild irritation into blatant frustration, and they run off before he can respond to their insolence, taking the steps two at a time.

Five is already sitting on his bed when they barge in, slightly out of breath, and he looks them up and down with the expression of pitying superiority he reserves for those who actually need to use their feet to get places.

“Did it work?” Four asks, and Five’s expression morphs into a downright giddy grin until he realizes what he’s doing and gets his features back under control.

“It did,” he nods and holds up a couple of slim folders. “Gave me enough time to zap in and out, get what we came for.”

“So this is it?” Six asks, suddenly sounding hesitant and very small.

Five shrugs. “We’ll find out. I had to grab what seemed the most promising. I am sure it does not come as a surprise to you that he has a file on each of us as thick as Number One’s thigh.”

Four pulls a face at the unwelcome mental image. “So what does he write about us?”

Five shoots him a look. “Would you believe me if I said that you really don’t want to know?”

Four thinks about that for a moment. “I would absolutely believe you,” he says seriously. “But I would still ask you to tell me.”

Five inclines his head. “Maybe some other time,” he says, not even trying to be subtle about changing the topic. Under other circumstances, Four would be offended, except –

“So what do you have?” Six asks, a little impatiently. He flops down next to Five on the bed, and Four follows his lead, squeezing into the slot between Six and the wall. It’s a tight fit, and he has to switch the cigarette to his left hand so he doesn’t risk burning a hole in Six’ favorite sweater.

Five flips the top folder open. “This is Number Four,” he explains, his finger already trailing the lines down the page. “Born October 1, 1989, at 12pm ….”

“We knew that already,” Four grumbles, but neither Five nor Six pay him any attention.

“… at the Government Hospital in East Berlin,” Five finishes. “Huh.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Four asks, feeling a little anxious without really knowing why. There’s nothing wrong with East Berlin. As far as he knows. Which he realizes is very little. Wasn’t there …

“Yeah, weird,” Six nods, as if he knows exactly what Five is trying to say. They do this sometimes, and it annoys the shit out of One and Two. Four doesn’t usually mind so much, except right now he’d really prefer if they were actually talking with words.

“What, what, what?” he asks, poking Six in the side with an insistent elbow. Six twists to escape his pointy limbs, jostling a grouchy Five in the process, and still manages to answer his question at the same time.

“That’s, like, not even a month before the Berlin Wall came down.”

“Oh,” Four says, and then: “ _Oh._ So you mean … you think those things are connected?”

Five pulls up his shoulders. “Just seems like a strange coincidence, is all.”

Four grins widely. “So basically I destroyed the Berlin Wall by being born. Hah!” He pumps a fist in the air and then winces when flakes of cigarette ash rain down on his head. “Take that, David Hasselhoff.”

Five frowns. “Who the hell is David Hasselhoff?”

Four stares at him in disbelief. “How can you be so smart and know so little about the ways of the world?”

Six actually laughs at that. Five glowers.

“Do you want me to keep going or not?”

“Of course,” Six says in an appeasing tone, patting his elbow, but Five doesn’t actually say anything else for a while.

“Mother anonymous … identity classified … no name here,” he mumbles finally, and Four’s stomach twinges with an emotion he can’t quite place. He’s had twelve years to come to terms with not having a name, but somehow he’d always imagined that at least his mother would have one.

“The hospital must have documentation, though, right?” Six asks. “Can we ask them to mail us a copy of their records?”

“In theory,” Five says grimly. “Except that this hospital closed in 1990 with the dissolution of the GDR.”

“So that’s it?” Four asks, deflated. He stubs out his cigarette against the bedpost and reaches for the package in his back pocket. Six shoots him a concerned look from underneath lowered lashes.

The door opens a crack. Five pulls off his left slipper and flings it against the door before Number One has finished uttering a cheerful “Hey, guys!”

He doesn’t even have to let go of the folders.

Four has seen Five do this a number of times. Somehow, out of all the awe-inspiring superhuman feats his siblings can accomplish, this is one of the few tricks that never seems to get old.

The door quickly closes again.

“So what do you have about me?” Six asks – whether to distract them from the cold trail in Berlin or because he simply cannot longer wait, Four isn’t sure.

Five opens the second folder, and blinks. “Uhm,” he says. “Alright.”

Six leans into his side to get a better look at the file. “Is that …”

“Yep,” Five says, then holds it up for Four to see. “The flag of North Korea. And a 10-page official document in … eh, Korean would be a safe bet, right? Half of it redacted.”

“What does it say?” Four asks, reaching for the folder.

Five rolls his eyes, and shifts the file out of his grasp. “I am flattered that you think I can decipher any foreign language just by staring at it long enough, but despite what you may be thinking I cannot actually read Korean.”

“There’s nothing else?” Six asks, and Five flips through the stack of papers in the file.

“Looks like Dad took some notes in the margins here? You’d really think his handwriting would be easier to read. Although on second thought, maybe this is not actually English. Okay, wait here …” He pulls out one of the pages and squints at it. “This says …” He goes still, swallows. “‘Mother deceased.’”

“Oh,” Six says.

Four exchanges a look with Five over Six’ head.

“I am sorry,” Five says, and the words sound unfamiliar and strange coming from his mouth.

Six shrugs unhappily. “It’s not like I actually knew her,” he says. “It shouldn’t make a difference.”

He visibly pulls himself together and straightens. “So,” he says, in a purposefully cheerful tone. “Which communist country were you stolen from?”

“I don’t know,” Five says, looking at his hands. “That was it.”

“What do you mean?” Four asks, confused. “What about your file?”

Five shakes his head. “There was nothing. The oldest document in my file is a chart from year one with information about formula amounts and diaper changes. If there’s any information about my birth mother, it wasn’t in that file.”

Four opens his mouth, then quickly sticks a new cigarette between his lips before he can make a stupid joke about how he had always known that Five was created in a test tube. He still has his suspicions, but even he knows that under the circumstances it’s probably not an appropriate thing to say.

“So, let me get this straight,” Six says slowly. “If we wanted to summarize our findings …” He looks down, his shoulders slumping. “Really, we got nothing.”

“Yeah,” Five says dryly. “I think that’s an accurate description.” He pauses.

“Until we find a way to infiltrate North Korea. But that might require a bit more careful planning than the half-assed heist we just pulled on Pogo.”

They look at each other, a little forlorn.

“Some birthday,” Six sighs.

“Well,” Four finally says, spreading his arms out wide. “At least we still got each other.”

It's supposed to be a joke. It comes out a little more earnestly than intended, though, and Five shoots him a withering stare of utter disgust.

“Urgh.”

Six snorts. His shoulders hitch, he giggles, and then doesn’t quite seem to know how to stop.

Because there’s something contagious about the rare sight of Six shaking silently with laughter, or perhaps simply for lack of something better to do, Four starts giggling as well, and despite his best efforts to keep a straight face, Five cannot seem to help himself. Somehow, Four ends up bumping into Six, who falls into Five, and the three of them topple over onto the covers in a pile of shaking bellies and awkward limbs. They just barely manage to extinguish the cigarette before the pillow goes up into flames, but somehow that only serves to set them off again.

They are still laughing when Number Two finally pops his head in the door and tells them that it is time for dinner, so it is not at all surprising that they all have tears in their eyes when they sit up gingerly and start straightening their clothes.

A purely physical reaction, that’s all.

 

**2007**

The alarm rings, and his mind slowly swims into consciousness, only to be greeted by a pounding headache and the taste of rotten skunk in his mouth.

Based on previous experience, that means he is probably not dead. Klaus thinks he’ll withhold judgment for the moment on whether that is something to be glad or disappointed about.

He can feel the sunlight tickling his face and keeps his eyes firmly closed. He must have forgotten to draw the blinds before going to bed. Since he doesn’t remember going to bed in the first place, that seems like a reasonable guess.

It’s not the first time by far that he’s woken up with such a spectacular hangover, but usually he has at least a reason … was there a reason this time?

There was indeed, he suddenly recalls, and then really wishes he hadn’t.

Because it’s the morning of their 18th birthday, and Ben …

and Ben …

“Happy Birthday,” someone says, vaguely behind his left ear.

Klaus is too miserable to flinch in surprise, but he coughs wetly, and frowns, and forces his left eye open halfway.

Ben is sitting on the edge of his desk, feet on the chair, smiling at him with fond patience. He is wearing a black turtleneck and his leather jacket, and there’s a book open on his knees.

“I thought you were dead,” Klaus says, trying to make it sound as accusatory as he can manage, and then he promptly passes out again.

 

**2010**

Klaus and Ben celebrate their 21st birthday alone.

Well.

Klaus celebrates, anyway. If drinking untypically expensive Bordeaux from the bottle and chainsmoking Pall Malls in the non-smoking room of a semi-respectable 2-star motel counts as celebrating.

Ben is there to keep him company, at least, in his usual dead kind of way.

Long after the sun had set, they had still been sitting on a park bench by the river, staring out at the lights on the other shore. Klaus had been getting close to the bottom of the first bottle of red, the effect of the cocaine already wearing off, when Ben had pulled the collar of his leather jacket together with a shiver.

“I am cold,” he had complained.

“You are dead,” Klaus had felt compelled to say. It had probably been a little mean to point out the obvious, but there was something about the occasion of their birthday that always made it more difficult to navigate the irrational resentment he sometimes felt towards his brother for having the audacity to go and actually die on him.

Ben had snorted, apparently not offended by Klaus’ half-hearted snark. “I am cold just looking at you. Your lips are starting to turn blue. You know they make clothes that are not just a line of holes connected by pieces of string?”

“Urgh, could you possibly be any more bougie?” Klaus had lamented, tugging at his worn-down although fabulous mesh top, but eventually he’d had to agree that Ben probably had a point.

So he had checked into the first motel whose staff was actually willing to rent him a room, courtesy of the young gentleman he’d hit it off with the previous night, who had been so generous in his appreciation that Klaus hadn’t even felt the temptation to snoop around in the drawers for cash when the guy had hopped in the shower the next morning.

He does have to admit that a functioning heating system and _I Love Lucy_ reruns on television constitute a significant improvement over the park bench. There is really only one thing that is missing now to make this a proper celebration.

“Remember the year Luther and Diego ruined the cake by starting a fistfight in the kitchen?” Ben asks lazily. He is stretched out on his back on the second bed, arms folded behind his head.

“Oh yeah,” Klaus says, lost in memory. “Poor Grace, she just couldn’t process it. Dad actually had to plug her in for a little while to calm her down.”

Ben turns his head to look at him with a grin. “And then we snuck out of the house …”

“… and went to get donuts, and the waitress gave us extras on the house because it was our birthday. Except then the manager came to kick us out because he didn’t believe we were actually siblings and born on the same day.”

“Yeah,” Ben laughs. “He thought we were making it all up.”

Klaus chuckles quietly. “Good times. When was that, fourteen?”

“Fifteen,” Ben corrects. He’s always been far better at keeping track of time. And so much better company than a Moleskine planner.

“Now I want cake,” Klaus announces. He leaves the wine bottle on the bedside table and fishes for the spare change in his pockets with one hand while he unhooks the chain on the door with the other.

“Wait here, I’ll be right back,” he tosses back into the room – and looks straight into Ben’s face looming over his shoulder.

“Or not,” he shrugs.

Ben shakes his head. “You do know that I can’t just wait around in a hotel room for you.”

“Yeah,” Klaus mumbles, and walks towards the elevator without turning his head again. “I just forgot.”

 _Forgot that you are not really here_ , he doesn’t say, but from the way Ben falls quiet, he heard him think it anyway.

The neon light in the deserted downstairs lobby is depressingly sterile, but the vending machine obediently spits out a pile of Twinkies in exchange for quarters. Klaus’ gaze falls onto a pile of tabloid magazines on the shabby coffee table, and he grabs the one on top of the stack to wrap his sugary bounty in, since there’s no one around to admonish him.

Back in their room, Klaus dumps the Twinkies on the bed, then folds himself into a lotus seat to flip through the pages of the celebrity mag.

“Birthday shindig for rising star,” Ben reads over his shoulder when he lingers a little too long on a double-spread. “Huh. Guess Allison’s birthday party is a little more exciting than ours.”

“Yeah,” Klaus says quietly, finger skimming lightly over the glossy pictures. There’s Allison in an elegant dark-blue dress, Allison hand in hand with some hipster dude he doesn’t recognize, Allison at an award show, posing for the cameras.

She looks nice and grown-up and very, very serious. He hasn’t spoken to her in two years. Klaus flings the magazine onto the nightstand and tears open the wrapping on the first Twinkie.

He thinks he should have called Diego, if only because right now he’s the only one Klaus still talks to from time to time. Maybe he’ll use the rest of his dimes tomorrow and give him a ring. Diego will huff and puff and act all annoyed, like he always does when he picks up the phone, but if Klaus doesn’t call, Diego would probably miss their annual tradition of arguing about whether Five is actually dead or not.

Not that they ever have any new information to spice up their debate. Diego is convinced that Five must be dead, after having been gone for eight years without as much as a single trace. And Klaus gets where he’s coming from, but he isn’t quite so sure. Considering how much the ghost of sweet little Ben is constantly on his case about the drugs and the drinking and the sleeping around, he can’t imagine that Five would pass up on the opportunity to annoy the shit out of him from the afterlife by being all superior and judgmental about Klaus’ poor life choices.

So whatever Diego may think, until he wakes up one day to Five and Ben playing Pinochle on the pillow next to his head, Klaus chooses to believe that he’s still out there somewhere, the little bastard.

“Do you think Five is still out there somewhere, the little bastard?” he asks idly, washing another Twinkie down with a chug of Bordeaux. The jury is still out on whether those two things actually go together or not.

Ben shrugs. “I’m just dead, not omniscient.”

“You don’t think you would have seen him over – there?” Klaus asks curiously. “If he was dead, I mean.”

“That’s not really how it works,” Ben shakes his head. “I don’t actually spend my free time hanging out with other dead people.”

“You don’t?” Klaus says, startled, then winces when the room starts to spin around him. He may be a little more drunk that he realized.

“It’s been more than three years,” Ben says slowly. “And you are only asking me this now?”

Klaus merely shrugs, and Ben’s face softens. Ben knows just as well as Klaus does why he never asked him many questions. For one thing, interrogating Ben about the afterlife would only serve to make his death feel a lot more real than it already does, and sometimes Klaus just needs to be able to pretend.

For another, Klaus is not a complete idiot. He may make fun of Ben for fussing over him, but he is fully aware that with the life he’s living, he’ll find out what it’s like to be dead first-hand at some point ... sooner rather than later. Better not to spoil the surprise. Except …

“So you never talk to other dead folks?” he asks, because he realizes that the idea of being dead would lose a lot of its appeal if it would mean that he'd actually get to hang out less often with Ben than he does now.

Ben tilts his head in consideration. “It’s like … I think there are places that attract ghosts somehow. Places with history. And people - not all of them are like you, most of them cannot see us, they are simply surrounded by shadows without ever realizing it. But that’s usually where I meet others. Most of them I run into when I am near you.”

“And what do you do when you are not with me?” Klaus asks. He raises the bottle to his mouth and drops it again with a frustrated sniff when he realizes that it’s empty.

“Just kind of … drifting,” Ben says. He pulls up his shoulders and wraps his arms around himself.

It sounds lonely, Klaus thinks. He closes his eyes. Lying down seems like a good idea, so he shifts around a little awkwardly, stretching out on his back. It feels nice to be horizontal, although the room doesn’t entirely stop moving.

“So you never got to see her either?” he asks, blinking an eye open again to glance at Ben.

“Her?”

“Your mother.”

“I don’t think so,” Ben shakes his head. “How would I even recognize her?”

“Wouldn’t you just …” Klaus trails off, rolls onto his side. Thinking seems hard all of a sudden. “Wouldn’t you just know?”

“I have no idea, man,” Ben says. His voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away.

“But …” Klaus starts, then can’t quite remember what he was trying to say. He did seem to think it was important, he knows that much.

“Get some sleep, Klaus,” he thinks he can hear Ben say fondly. "Happy birthday."

Obediently, he closes his eyes again. For a moment, there is a hint of something ghosting over his skin, a slight draft perhaps, like an exhale.

It’s gone before he can decide whether he is just imagining it, and then the darkness pulls him under.

 

**2014**

“Klaus,” Vanya says, sounding surprised and a little wary as she holds the apartment door open.

“What are you doing here?”

She looks understandably confused but not distracted, and doesn’t turn back to check the living room behind her, which only confirms what Klaus already suspected. She has been spending the day as alone as he has, and so Klaus only feels a tiny bit guilty for gently pushing his way into the apartment, forcing her to take a step backwards to let him in.

“Happy birthday?” he tries, holding up the bottle of gin with one hand and the pitiful flowers he stole at the corner store with the other.

“You are here for our birthday?” she asks, her eyes narrowed in suspicion, but she does take the flowers gingerly and closes the door behind them.

“Also, I read your book,” he admits, and Vanya groans and rubs her forehead.

“Okay,” she sighs, sounding resigned. “Are you here to yell at me?”

“No …?” Klaus says, blinking at her with wide innocent eyes. “Why would I come here to yell at you?”

In all honesty, he’s mostly here because he desperately wants a hot shower and something akin to a bed. Also, he hasn’t seen Ben since they got into a fight over Klaus checking himself out of rehab a couple of days ago, and without the ghost of his brother to talk to he’s been feeling utterly and debilitatingly lonely. Until recently, Diego used to let him crash on his couch sometimes, but since he’s been shacking up with the lady cop, Klaus is a little more hesitant to intrude.

He is not going to tell Vanya any of this, though, and she doesn’t seem too bothered by his evasive answer, merely shrugs and leads him down the hallway into her small kitchen. She drops the flowers into the sink, plastic and all, then waves in an awkward silent gesture of _Make yourself at home._

Klaus circles the kitchen once before coming to stand next to her by the sink. He picks two clean-looking glasses off the drying rack and sets them on the kitchen table.

“You don’t happen to have ice or lime?” he asks without much hope, while he’s working on twisting the cap off the gin bottle.

She raises her brows. “I think I have a stalk of wilted celery.”

“You can keep it,” he says magnanimously, and fills both glasses to the rim. Might as well make it count. He hands one of the drinks to Vanya and spills some liquor onto his hand when her fingers jostle his.

“No seriously, though,” she says, holding the glass in front of her chest without drinking. “You are not mad at me about the book?”

Klaus licks the gin off the back of his hand absent-mindedly. “Eh,” he says with a shrug. “Mad is a relative term, right?”

“Right …?” Vanya says slowly. This is what she always does, what she has always done – goes along with everyone else’s ideas to see where they lead before she reveals anything about herself. The book, Klaus realizes, may have been the first time she actually came out and said what she thought, unprompted and all by herself.

Of course Klaus says what he thinks all the time, it’s just that his siblings rarely take him seriously, and so they rarely get mad at him over it. Vanya, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same kind of practice in acting as court jester, and so her too-earnest divulgement of family secrets hit everyone extra hard.

“Well,” he says, and guides the glass to his mouth. Gin, lukewarm and neat, is not exactly a revelation to the taste buds, but it’s at least guaranteed to make them drunk.

“Am I mad at you for telling people about my sex life?” he asks, and shakes his head before she can open her mouth. “Definitely not.”

He takes another drink. “Although Waffle House Tim may resent you for pushing him out of the closet, so you might want to go elsewhere for your pancakes the next couple of years.”

Vanya actually smiles at that, inclining her head.

“Am I mad at you for bringing up Ben’s death?” he continues, and waves his free hand so-so. “Kind of,” he says, watching her wince over the rim of his glass. “But I suppose you didn’t say anything that isn’t true.”

He takes another gulp, longer and deeper this time.

“Am I as mad at you as I am at Dad and Luther for actually getting him killed?” He takes a deep breath.

“Not even in the same galaxy.”

Vanya sort of deflates at that. She doesn’t seem tense anymore, she merely looks sad and tired and very young. On an impulse, he puts an arm around her in an awkward half-hug, careful not to spill their drinks. She looks startled for a moment, then surprises him too by actually returning the hug.

“Okay,” she finally says and steps back, pressing the palm of her hand against her eyes. “Okay then.”

“Let’s drink to that,” he says and raises his half-empty glass to clink it gently against her full one.

“Sure,” she agrees, “why not,” and lifts the drink to her mouth, draining a third of it in one go.

“To being 25,” she says dryly, and Klaus nods and drinks as well.

“To 25.” He sets the glass down and reaches for the bottle, because there’s no reason to stop now.

When he looks up again, Ben is perched on top of the sink behind Vanya’s shoulder, thoughtfully twirling an orange gerbera between his hands.

 

**2019 (2.0)**

He is shuffling down the hallway towards the kitchen, bleary-eyed and yawning, when his Apple Watch dings with a reminder. He squints at the display and raises his brows. Maybe the weird thing is good for something after all. He had completely forgotten what day it is.

The kitchen is blessedly empty, and he heads straight for the coffeemaker, wincing a little when he stubs his toe on the corner of the cabinet. The coffeemaker is a monstrosity of exquisite gleaming beauty, the first object Five had ventured out to purchase as soon as they returned from their world-saving mission in 2002.

Klaus cannot remember all Hargreeves siblings ever being in such immediate agreement about anything other than the coffee machine from this strange new version of the 21st century. Figures that the one thing to happily reunite them is the beverage their father hated with a passion.

“Ah, caffeine,” he murmurs happily when the machine obediently spits out a stream of steaming dark liquid. He pulls the sugar jar across the counter and scoops five spoonful into his cup, then takes a sip that wakes up his brain and burns his tongue. It’s perfect.

“Happy birthday to me,” he sings quietly and pulls out one of the kitchen chairs to sink into, his eyes fluttering shut.

Klaus thinks he can be forgiven for almost forgetting their birthday this year. The past months have been a bit of an adjustment – although admittedly perhaps not quite as much as being dropped into the middle of the Vietnam War with nothing but a time-altering briefcase and the shirt on his back.

It does feel good to be back in his 30-year old body, long-term effects of addiction, malnourishment and all. He has decided that young and healthy is definitely overrated – the combination of being an absolute lightweight and feeling horny all the goddamn time really wasn’t as much fun as he’d remembered, and he certainly doesn’t miss his skin being wrecked havoc on by teenage hormones.

But while his body feels familiar, the new timeline has been a source of constant disorientation, of which Klaus blames about 20 percent on the unexpected shifts in their family dynamic and the remaining 80 percent on the internet, this mystical and inexhaustible source of impressively weird shit.

A slight draft tickles the hair on his bare forearms, and he squints to look for the open window before he remembers that their kitchen hardly has any natural light.

A young East-Asian woman is standing beside the refrigerator with a curious expression on her face.

Klaus takes another gulp of his coffee and finds himself wishing for a shot of whiskey.

“A little privacy, perhaps?” he asks, blinking at her from tired eyes. He hasn’t had nearly enough coffee yet.

She smiles at him, which makes her seem oddly familiar. His first thought is Vietnam, but that doesn’t seem quite right, and when she starts speaking, the words don’t sound anything like Vietnamese.

“Have we met?” Klaus asks, his brain still refusing to kick into gear. “I’m Klaus.”

She is laughing at him, he is pretty sure.

“Min-ji,” she says, pointing at herself.

“Hi,” he says. “Not that I mind chatting with you over coffee, but I really don’t understand a word of what you are saying.”

She chuckles, and waves away his concerns with a dismissive gesture. Then her face shifts into something more serious, and her voice sounds earnest when she starts to talk again. Finally she puts her hands together in front of her chest and bows a little.

He mirrors the bow reflexively. When he looks up again, she is gone.

“What the fuck,” Klaus says, and scratches his head.

“No really but what.”

 

He finds Ben and Five in the reading room – the reading room being what Five has renamed their father’s office after they threw out the musty taxidermy and the uncomfortable furniture and replaced them with an adequate light source and cozy chairs. Which also means Klaus can finally enter the space without a feeling of existential dread crawling up his neck.

His brothers are sprawled across the two comfortable loveseats, seemingly lost to the world. Ben is about halfway through what looks like a 1000-page novel, Five has a pile of newspapers in his lap that he is muttering at with quiet viciousness.

“Happy 30th birthday, beloved brothers,” Klaus announces with theatrical pathos, then lets himself fall into the opposite corner of the couch that Ben currently occupies, and secretly delights at the way his knee bumps into Ben’s completely solid ankle as he tries to find a comfortable position for all his limbs.

“Happy birthday indeed,” Five grumbles. Somehow, his 30-year old self still has the same kind of childishly petulant look when he’s deeply annoyed about something. It definitely eases the disconnect Klaus can’t help but feel whenever he’s looking at his brother's slightly receding hairline and the dark stubble on his chin.

“I’m sure there are some higher administrators in the Commission who are having a good laugh over this right now.”

“Huh?” Klaus leans forward to reach for one of the papers that’s at risk of sliding off Five’s lap. The first page sports a long review of _Joker_ , the film about the creepy made-up supervillain that Allison bizarrely found herself starring in when she returned from the past, but he didn’t think the Commission was particularly interested in blockbuster cinema.

“We went to all this trouble to save the world,” Five laments, waving another paper at him. “We prevented the end of life on Earth via lunar explosion, and now it’s about to go to shit anyway.” He reaches for his own coffee mug on the side table and takes a sip, then keeps clutching it between his hands like a lifeline.

“Apparently the environmental collapse of the planet is imminent, and a nuclear war between North Korea and the United States doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility. Looks like the human population in this timeline has done a pretty good job at bringing about the apocalypse without any supernatural assistance.”

“In other words,” Ben pipes up cheerfully from behind his Russian novel: “The world is still fucked.”

“On the flipside,” Klaus says, and scratches his belly. “Vanya can play the violin without breaking pieces out of the moon. Ben is not a ghost. Marihuana is legal in 33 states. There’s this place called Starbucks that sells donut-flavored cake pops. And we can leave the house together without people thinking that I am your father. So –“ He smiles. “Not all is lost?”

Five shakes his head. “Your complete failure at setting priorities will never cease to amaze me.”

“Time is on our side,” Ben shrugs. “We have about twenty years to find a way to reverse the effects of global warming. The odds are so much better than when you had to figure out how not to die while the world was bursting into flames.”

“That’s … one way to look at it,” Five says skeptically, but he’s also hiding a smile behind his newspaper that he thinks Klaus can’t see, so he should really just get down from his high horse and admit that he’s human already. Superhuman. Whatever. As human as the rest of them anyway.

“Also,” Klaus says, when he remembers why he came here in the first place: “Ben’s mother just came by to say hello.”

Ben stares at him, open-mouthed.

“You are only just remembering this now?” Five asks incredulously.

“You just accused me of not appropriately prioritizing impending global doom over personal interest,” Klaus complains. “There is really no way to please you, is there?”

“Klaus,” Ben says urgently. His face is alternating between anxious and hopeful.

“Yes, she just showed up in the kitchen and …” Klaus frowns. “I don’t know. Smiled. Seemed to say thank you. Told me her name was Min-ji. And left.”

Five scrunches his forehead. “How do you know it was her?”

Klaus rolls his eyes. “Because there are only so many Korean women looking exactly like Ben who come to haunt me on a weekly basis.”

“Did she look okay?” Ben asks quietly.

Klaus thinks about that for a moment. She had looked healthy and put together, no missing limbs or guts spilling out, although as he and Ben both know very well, that doesn’t necessarily mean that she didn’t die a violent death.

“She looked happy,” he finally says, which is mostly true, and Klaus likes the way Ben exhales and relaxes at the words.

“Maybe it’s time we finally took a trip to North Korea,” Five announces. He jumps up from his seat, newspapers flying everywhere, and pulls open one of the large filing cabinets underneath the windows.

“Because of the war?” Klaus asks, confused.

“Because of Ben’s mother,” Five's voice echoes from inside the cabinet. “We are 18 years behind on our research. Time to finally figure out where the hell Dad picked us up from.” He pauses and lifts his head up, a thoughtful look on his face. “And maybe we’ll find a way to prevent the war while we are at it.”

He straightens and waves a couple of familiar-looking folders at them.

“You kept these?” Ben asks, surprised. “I thought we agreed to throw out all the surveillance-related materials.”

Five shrugs, not even a little embarrassed. “I did get rid of the diaper change tracking charts, if that’s what you are asking. But this stuff … you never know when it might come in handy again.”

“What do you have," Klaus asks, "that makes you think we have a better chance at finding anything than we did 18 years ago?”

“Well,” Five says slowly, “a name and a description, for one thing. And decades of experience as a time-traveling assassin. I’d think that puts us at a significant advantage over our 12-year old selves.”

He lifts the folders encouragingly. “What do you think?”

Ben and Klaus share a look.

“Just to be absolutely clear about this,” Klaus drawls. “You are seriously asking for our opinion?”

Five seems to think about it for a moment. “Well, I can’t really do this by myself,” he finally says. He plops back down onto the couch and stares at the folder in his lap.

“Now that I am thinking about it, we should probably take Vanya along as well.”

Klaus raises his brows. “Huh,” he says. “The world as we know it really has come to an end.”

“You actually think we can find her this time?” Ben asks.

“Possibly,” Five says, a little distracted, already elbows-deep in the paperwork on his knees.

“Hey,” Klaus says. “We are turning 30 today, and miraculously we are all still – again – alive.”

He raises his coffee mug in a toast.

“I’d say anything is possible at this point.”


End file.
